“‘The clinical state of Michael Schumacher is stable as he’s under permanent care and treatment,’ Grenoble hospital said in a statement on Monday. ‘However, the medical team in charge stresses that it continues to assess his situation as critical.'”

108 comments on Some teams opposed double points – Ecclestone

I think it’s probably good that Sirotkin gets a second season in 3.5. If he impresses again (which he should) no one will bat an eyelid if he gets a seat next season; if he fails to impress Sauber will probably just find an excuse not to run him and we can all move on.

I forget how old Lewis is sometimes, he’s really halfway through his career now.

Think so too, Kvyat to TR is already borderline. Gutierrez showed what a big leap it is into F1, it took him half a season to drive the car instead of being driven by it. And if Sirotkin has what it takes then another season in 3.5 will just make him better.

the critics âdonât know why itâs a bad idea. They have no idea why.â

Just because you put your fingers in your ears and sing to yourself whenever somebody near you tries to say something sensible, that doesn’t mean they aren’t making logical, persuasive, correct, and not-bat-****-insane statements, Bernie.

I thought the reasons many oppose this were very clear…so I don’t know why BE doesn’t know why, other than the fingers in the ears trick.

The basic reasons echoed by millions including many past and present F1 insiders…it’s artificial, it degrades the other races, it potentially punishes a team for doing the better job up until the last race.

I also think it is smoke and mirrors for BE, or anybody whose for this idea, to claim how past Championships would have gone, or to claim this will prevent a runaway season, when it is just as possible that the driver already leading the WDC chase with 3 or 4 double points races to go (BE’s ideal) could absolutely bury the competition and double points for the last 1 or 2 races still not being enough.

The main thing here is that BE’s idea equates to manufacturing exciting endings to a season like viewers can’t see the phoniness of it and are just mindless drones who are incapable of differentiating what is real and what is fake just as we are expected to like DRS for adding passing at any cost…including the integrity of the sport.

But what would the teams know, eh BE? They’re just the ones affected by this, and the ones trying to do what they love while you erode the concept of racing and letting the chips fall where they may on the track, in favour of something in which the teams and drivers are just puppets being manipulated, along with the fans, to ‘guarantee’ ( so much for mystery, intrigue, and tension) last-race WDC deciders. I wonder how long F1 can go guaranteeing last race WDC deciders before that becomes predictable and people decide to not bother watching the first 16 races?

This is Bernie all over. He often plays dumb to what every one else is saying. Something he is never ever picked up on by the so called journalists who interview him. Infuriating, but I guess these journalists want to keep their race passes.

I guess its negotiation talks over the media anyhow @matt90. Or maybe that is just my hope!

Marko mentioned that Bernie wanted to have the last 4 races with double points, and in the end they voted on having “just” the last one double points. Now some teams say they want to get rid of the last one, Bernie counters with bringing back something close to his original proposal on the table, etc.

Lets just hope that in the end they see reason and dump this stupid idea, because especially next year it should be either far more exiting because some cars/teams have technical breakdowns or a steamroller when one team nails it perfectly and in such a case not even 4 double point races are going to change that.

If we have to have double points at all, would anybody else much prefer to see three (or more) double points races at the end of the year rather than just the finale? I know I would, as it would reduce the luck factor somewhat and make it more like a playoff. Still distasteful, but I think the teams have really shot themselves in the foot with this ‘compromise’. There should be multiple double points races or (preferably) none – having just one is the worst outcome possible.

I vote for having none…but if we must have this concept I think having the last race for double points is terrible, and I think having the last 3 or 4 races with double points will guarantee a drastic viewer fallout for the first 16 races and so the gain for BE will be naught, and the loss will be the further erosion of the integrity of the sport.

I think BE, and most fans who agree with this concept, are only looking at the one aspect of this…the last-race WDC decider and it’s irresistability, but have blinders on and can’t see the forest for the trees. They don’t want to acknowledge the phoniness of it, nor the possibility that it could make one driver absolutely trounce the competition and be untouchable with 2 races to go after he just won 2 double pointers in a row.

I would personally prefer to have the double points race awarded for Monaco, as it’s a much more demanding track than the others, plus it’s a sort of “heritage” event in a way, in view of of it’s longevity…

Still, plenty of other championships award Double or increased points for “blue riband” events, and have done for years without the fan community going to peices over it. WEC (although one could argue that double points for Le Mans devalues all the other races in the season), Blancpain and before that FIA GT for Spa etc. etc.

Not sure if I would pick Monaco. It is one of the tracks, if not the single track where qualifying high is so crucial, so I think having double points there places a huge amount of emphasis on Saturday. Not that that is so bad but one could look at the combination of Monaco and double points as being hugely damaging to some drivers chances, stemming from just one make or break lap on Saturday.

About half the companies listed there won’t employ any aerodynamicists because they’re space or avionics companies, and a good portion of the others only have their manufacturing or structural R&D in this country. Aerodynamic design in the UK is pretty much limited to military aircraft by BAE Systems and a few smaller outfits and turbomachinery by Rolls Royce.

The claim there are more aerodynamicists in F1 might be a push but I bet it’s in the same ballpark.

I think its possible, because for an aeroplane they do much simpler things, and then have a very detailed look at them over years of development. Compared to F1, where they go into minuscule detail but have to solve every issue 10-20 times each season, I am not actually that surprised.
Not to mention that a big part of the UK aerospace industry is in things like engines, defence systems, radar technology etc (airbus aero can be in Spain, Germany, France, … for example) far more than aerodynamics. One area where Aerospace might have benefited from the F1 community is in composites tech, although Italy and Germany are strong in those fields too.

Not so hard to believe. F1 probably pays a lot better and is also more fun. Each team probably has roughly 100+ guys working on the aero alone, whereas the space industry spends very little time working on Aero because the rockets they use are already developed and approved. The space industry focuses more on building satellites and other space going equipment which sits inside the rocket as payload and does not have to be aero efficient at all.

Bernie has total contempt for F1 fans so it is little wonder he thinks we will be engrossed by any old rubbish as long as there are changes in position (you can’t really call them passes) and celebrities mixed with conspicuous comsumption.

People will watch a 90 minute football match with three goals and rave about how great the game was.Yet the same people will watch a 90 minute race with three overtakesin and say itâs boring.At what point between watching the two sports does the mindset change?

Because very obviously, in a 90 minute football match, there are 90 minutes of possibilities for something to happen. There are 90 minutes where goals could be scored. Where upsets can happen. Where everything is not a static procession. Where things which are not goals, but are potentially interesting, could happen.

In a motor race where 22 cars go round, and only 3 overtakes happen, it means that with the exception of those overtakes, absolutely nothing else happened. The cars circled in a pack, and followed the same path at basically the same speed.

The equivalent football match would be one in which the ball was kicked three times.

@hairs I beg to disagree with you on the point that if overtakes did not happen “Absolutely nothing else happened” . F1 is little more than overtaking alone. You have oversimplified the F1 race too much with that comment. That means qualifying should not be interesting at all because no overtaking happens there. If you recollect San Marino Imola GP of 2005 and 2006 both Alonso and Schumi held their position in their respective years but those were absolutely a thrilling GPs. If no of overtakes alone were to decide the thrill of racing then you should try out NASCAR which has so many overtakes every minute.

Exactly, @hairs are you trying to tell us at any point in a GP there is absolutely no “possibility” for:
-a breakdown
-a driver error
-a rain shower
-a pit stop error
-an attempted pass (i know, DRS, but a girl can dream)
-a defensive driving manoeuvre
-a yellow flag period
-team orders; and the possibility of insubordination
-a massive pileup. like with bits flying all over the shop, and like “booms” and “smash” and stuff, and a shookup race order (with everyone ok)
-a pickup truck deciding to drive on-track

I think for a minute there you thought you were Bernie and we were all the mindless simpletons he makes us out to be.

– Breakdowns: rarely happen in f1 anymore.
– Driver errors: equally rare.
– rain: proving that without outside interference beyond the control of men is required to make things interesting.
-pit stop errors: so you admit that something has to happen outside the driver’s control for something interesting to happen?
– an attempted pass: rare in modern f1 without drs or deliberately wonky tyres due to the wall of downforce. See 2009.
– yellow flags: you mean a part of the race where overtaking, or indeed racing, is expressly forbidden?
– insubordination: see what happened to Alguersari?
– pileups: compare and contrast with the nascar dismissal above…
– truck on track: you mean a hideously dangerous mistake which could lead to multiple deaths? All in the name of “the show”?

I haven’t said anything about f1 fans, I’ve merely pointed out the allegory in the COTD is nonsense.

– Breakdowns: Mark Webber, Force India, Nico Rosberg.
– Driver errors: Hamilton letting Alonso pass in Canada and Spa; Massa crashing in Monaco, Canada and retiring in Silverstone;
– rain: Canada qualifying, Spa qualifying
-pit stop errors: Sutil and Di Resta retiring in Malasya (could have been Bahrain), Pic coming in to the pits in one of the last races while his team wasnt ready, one of the caterhams losing a wheel and retiring, Mark Webber getting lapped because his wheel fell off.
– an attempted pass: Perez and Sutil in Monaco, Alonso in Bahrain without DRS.
– yellow flags: a collision, many times it can change the dynamics of the race, especially if there is a safety car
– insubordination: Vettel and Webber, Raikkonen and Grosjean, verbal insubordination from Massa.
– pileups: This year only in GP2, but last year we had Spa.

This were some of the things happened in the 2013 season, which was largely regarded as one of the worst seasons in the last decade, therefore your original point “absolutely nothing else happened” is invalid.

I never said how positive or negative any of those points were, i was merely refuting your point that if theres no overtaking “nothing else happened”. If you choose not to garner entertainment from such events, then thats fine by me, but lets remember, our opinions â fact.

And for the record, i don’t necessarily agree with COTD either, i do think it’s too simplistic. I was just addressing your critique of COTD, which for me was even more myopic.

Plus, re: your reply to @breno, nowhere in your original post did you make a reference to “rarity”, you flat out stated nothing happens. If you’re pushing the point that rare events cannot be considered as entertaining then we’ll have to define “rare”, as theres plenty of things that can happen in football, but i’d also consider a large proportion of them to be rare, and therefore irrelevant to my overall enjoyment.

But if there were less overtakes then they would be much more of a deciding factor and so more exciting when it does happen.

It’s just a personal preference, call me a dinosaur, thats fine. I could watch a car crawl all over the back of another car for a full race and not get past and to me that;s great to watch. The defensive driving, ”where’s he gonna try the pass?” ”Will it end in contact?” ”He missed a chance there”

Same as football; ”oooh, he’s hit the bar” ”we can exploit our speed on the wings to create chances” ”That’s a defensive error”

@tmax do races like that happen anymore? No, because
the frontrunners are too spread out and there is no money for midfield teams to compete anymore. Was anyone battling vettel for the lead last year? No. Whenever the tyres worked, he disappeared.

In a motor race where 22 cars go round, and only 3 overtakes happen, it means that with the exception of those overtakes, absolutely nothing else happened.

Disagree.

During a race with only 3 overtakes there will likely have been a dozen overtake attempts, In the same way that in a football match which may feature 3 goals you get a lot more near goals which help create excitement.
Also looking at football you can have a 0-0 draw which is just as exciting as a match with several goals because of the near misses & other things going on.

The number of overtakes alone does not make a race more exciting, Especially if 90% of those so called overtakes via DRS were utterly boring to watch.
One of the early DRS-fest’s was Istanbul 2011, It featured 126 passes, Virtually all in the DRS zone & all of them were real easy so while the levels of passing were high, The quality of those passes & the racing in general was extremely low & that made things very dull to watch.

Again looking at football, Would a match featuring 50+ goals be more exciting than a 0-0 draw if those 50+ goals were achieved by there been no goalkeeper in the goal at times during the match or some other means of guaranteeing a lot more goals were scored?

I think so to! Who cares when backmarkers pass each other three times and other contenders are just driving in trains, saving tires.
It is other thing, when the three passes are made for the lead, then I don’t think that race was boring, rather very competetive and interesting. Like a football match, where one teams hits 1:0, then oponent blasts 1:1 before half time and there will be a late 2:1 winner by controversial penalty. So goes for a grand prix race, when there will be a penaltiy or a crucial mistake for the leading cars in the late stages.

Indeed, the analogy is ludicrous, and comparisons between Football and F1 have to be made very carefully if they are to make any sense at all. But the answer to the question it poses is there anyway: the average football fan is very different from the average F1 fan. People who rave about 3 overtakes in a rainy Monaco GP will find a football match played in a rainy day in Monaco with 3 goals quite a boring affair.

Nevertheless, football is often seen as more entertaining because the 22 men on the field have much more freedom to display flair and creativity than F1 drivers, who have to find perfection at doing the same set of movements several times during these 90 minutes. Football players can dribble, fake an injury, do a backheel pass, insult each other, hurt each other and make jokes – you can even see them smile or get frustrated from different angles – there is a lot more nuance. But I would much rather watch the F1 race – there, man and machine become one looking for perfection and the setting is usually aesthetically pleasing. Not all football fans are able to appreciate the sunset on a track surrounded by elegant buildings while 22 men drive those roaring beasts trying to perform the best lap possible over and over again; that is why they ‘get bored’ and prefer to watch 22 men ‘gently hurt each other’ trying to kick a ball through a line.

Football became a lot more boring (and expensive) than F1 quite some time ago. I can also draw some comparisons there:

1. Lots of people complaining about the bloated F1 race calendar – how does it compare to the number of league games, so-called ‘Champions League’ (I remember it happening twice a month, now it’s twice a week), cup games, and so on?

2. Rising costs. How much do clubs pay for players’ salaries alone nowadays in, for example, MU or Real compared to 20 year ago? How much have the ticket prices risen?

If you believe ‘nothing else’ happened in an F1 race with few overtakes, then I’m allowed to believe that nothing at all happened in a football match that ended 0-0. There’s no point in oversimplifying both sports. And that’s why I think the COTD is absolutely spot on. People might not appreciate pit stops, or strategy changes, or other things that happen, but I do. If a driver can’t overtake, so be it. However, I couldn’t care less for a throw-in. I think football is boring full stop.

So since I do not watch football, like so often happens in F1, I think I am perfectly qualified to propose changes to the sport. I would also love to see DRS-style goals in football. When a team is behind, the opponents’ goal is expanded to the width of the field. And the ball should be smaller. Women should be allowed in men’s teams. There should be random rain-showers. I want cameras on the player’s heads. I’m also not getting all the fuzz about football shoes. So the best thing would be if every player had to use the same kind of shoe. Same size and all. That means the game is fair and everybody has the same chances.

Without these changes I don’t see any reason to watch that sport. I know those things might upset football fans, but who cares? The sport is boring and has to be changed. It will be expensive, but for the good of everyone, the ticket prices could be raised. To like 3 times of what they are now.

All you soccer fans will chase me, but soccer (or football, as named in England) is the most boring sport for me (I’m a real tiny minority but that’s my opinion). To see a match for 90 minutes and sometimes it ends with no goals, pffffffffffff. I like basketball because a “boring” match ends up 70-71 and a superb one 112-113, with the final dunk done when the clock is in zero and the ball is in the air, flying to the ring, people paralized… I love this game TM ;P

To see a match for 90 minutes and sometimes it ends with no goals, pffffffffffff. I like basketball because a âboringâ match ends up 70-71 and a superb one 112-113, with the final dunk done when the clock is in zero and the ball is in the air, flying to the ring, people paralizedâŚ I love this game TM ;P

No offense but I dislike basketball for the exact same reason. Each team score on almost every attack so it keeps going back and forth with little build up, little momentum, little variety, just back and forth, back and forth… and then an occasional fail to make up the difference. I can’t possibly sit through an entire game.

No, I am not a soccer fan either – that’s too far towards the other end of the scale with all the 0-0 finishes.

If FIA wants to have finals in racing they should go all the way instead of some utterly ill-thought points gimmick. Eliminate everybody but the ten highest ranked before the penultimate race which is not about points but about eliminating the five more cars before the final. Let the final consist of two races; one Saturday and one Sunday. Let the starting grid be picked by a draw and invert it for the second race. In case of a draw, let the time time difference count.

Now that would be exiting and the suspense between Saturday and Sunday would be intense because any of the five could still possibly win.

Who knows what makes football exciting anyway, the only time I was really interested was when I placed a bet some time ago (and lost), haven’t watched a football match since.
At the end of the day it’s all subjective, for me it would take 10 goals to keep my attention, but Hulkenberg blocking Hamilton for fourth place in Korea certainly kept me glued to the screen, to someone else that would be boring.

Bernie, bless him, is like a bad engineer. Not like, is. He sees a problem and tries to fix the symptoms of that one problem without understanding the underlying issue. Maybe he does understand the underlying issue but at 83 just doesn’t give a damn: there’s only so much time left to come out of this with his billions unscathed. Yes, that’s it, he has the typical short-term mentality of a money-man: screw the actual business, so long as he gets his money. Unfortunately while he wields all this power and the ineffectual yes-men around him (I’m looking at you, Montezemolo, Horner, Whitmarsh et al) roll over and give him what he wants, F1 sinks further into the mire. I don’t know what the likes of Monty et al are thinking or if they even care about anything other than winning whatever it is they’re entered into and making it out again with as much money as possible, but they certainly aren’t being good stewards of the sport, nor being honest advocates on behalf of us, the fans, many of whom have followed F1 from the 60s or before, into this miserable cul-de-sac on a derelict estate we now find ourselves. The men – and women (Claire Williams) – of F1 need to collectively grow spines or gonads or something and stand up to this ridiculous short-termist tinkering. Really, F1 needs to get a clue. Maybe they think they’ll wait out Bernie – either he’ll pop his clogs or get jailed – and then they’ll be free to fix it how they want without being overridden by Darth Pecunious. Well, life doesn’t work that way. By the time Bernie leaves the scene there’ll be nothing left of F1 worth following. Nice work, boys and girls.

BE, and the teams that go along with him, need to be careful what they wish for. The last race being for double points is already bad enough, but if they agree on the last 3 or 4 I envision that viewership will fall off drastically for the first 80% of the season, so they will have further eroded the integrity of the sport using points manipulation, for only a detrimental ultimate result.

As BE and the teams continue down this path it is my hope that declining viewership, which I think is the only voice that the public has, will dictate a new direction for F1, and it will have to be simplification, not further manipulative concepts that seem to have them becoming laughable, that become the answer.

And what a shame that on the cusp of new technical regs and more stable tires that should on their own shake things up in F1, the talk is dominated not by hope that the changes will make a big difference to the product, but by attempts to further guarantee with manipulation a last race WDC decider, like, as someone pointed out, even F1 seems to have no faith that all the expenses the teams have been put through for the new regs have been worth it.

I tend to agree. I’m so frustrated by what has been going on in the management of F1, probably like many, many others, that I’m tempted to not watch it anymore. I’ve gone from getting up at 4:30am (in the USA) to watch live races from Europe, to recording it, to reading the reports on the web the following day! But then we have a virtual new formula this year and I’m interested to see how it plays out…

Perhaps I maligned Bernie et al. Maybe he’s not trying to fix last season’s problems, but is looking ahead to a dire 2014 season where continual retirements due to reliability and muted racing caused by the need to preserve fuel and tyres lead to a catastrophic viewership fall-off with tickets unsold to many European GPs. Perhaps they’re tinkering with the points in the hope that there’s something to tune in for at the end of the season? Still, at the end of the day, Bernie cares only about the millions coming his way rather than the fans get the sort of racing that we deserve from the supposed premiership of motor racing.

One of the few COTD’s I don’t agree with. The principal applied here is flawed. Every sport is different. It makes absolutely no sense to compare them. By that logic, a boxing match in which 3 punches are landed till KO shouldn’t be boring (even though it was obviously one-sided). A cricket match in which a team is bundled up for a total of just 3 runs (highly unlikely) and defeated shouldn’t be called boring, the incompetence of the players notwithstanding. A basketball match where the total number of shots netted is 3 shouldn’t be called boring.
Also, there are many 0-0 draws in football where both teams are satisfied to play out a draw. Would you like to watch a race with no overtakes, where no one even tries?

Let me take it a little further. As often as we do compare the legends of our sport, we realize that with different sets of regulations and different machines, a truly level platform where one can compare them does not exist. And that is just in the sport of F1. To compare F1 to football (which is literally, a totally different ball game) with its various regulations and rules and try to justify something is absolutely redundant.

I’d also like to add – I agree that too much emphasis is laid on overtaking and strongly dislike DRS for that very purpose. Defensive driving is no longer appreciated and that is disappointing. I remember the few Schumi-Alonso battles which have been mentioned elsewhere in this thread and am often explaining to my friends the beauty of those duels.
But comparing two different sports is an exercise in futility.

Also, there are many 0-0 draws in football where both teams are satisfied to play out a draw. Would you like to watch a race with no overtakes, where no one even tries?

– I think that last part I highlighted is the important part here.

A football match that ends in a 0-0 result can be both a tedious affair or a thrilling tug of war. Likewise an F1 can be a thrill even if it ends up with not having many cars passing each other, provided that there were attempts at passes that required skill but were blocked off or not quite managed well enough.
The problem is, that in current day F1 the “goals” with DRS look more like penalty shots. A match being decided by 3, or up to 126 for that matter, of those just is not exiting. And before the F-duct and DRS it had turned into just sitting behind and hoping for something that would never come before your tyres wore out in far too many cases due to to wake not allowing to have a good shot at the goal.

As I understand it @jaymz, the stable part is that doctors are now confident that there will not be any big changes for the worse anymore. On the other hand, he is still in a situation where its almost impossible to predict when he can be taken out of coma and in what condition he will be.

Stable but critical makes more sense from sound of things, but I believe it means: he isn’t gonna die right now but he also isn’t out of the danger zone. There are quite a few things that can go wrong from here on…

My friend, a few years younger than Schumi, had a ruptured vein in his brain almost two years ago. It happened right in front of a hospital. His body recovered rather quickly and it is fine now, but his brain is gone. The same scenario is very likely for Schumi, we will not really know anything until he “wakes up”. One can always hope for a miracle.

I think it’s time for Bernie to let F1 go. He’s done a lot for the sport, but it’s time to pass it on to someone younger. No matter how smart or nice someone is, in the end, age will do its own thing. At that age, people start to believe in outrageous ideas.

@andae23 I have the same feeling here, as if we are unable to form an objective opinion on the matter. Ecclestone has gone too far – again! I’m so fed up with the arrogance, the corruption and the pure ignorance in the way he is leading F1, can’t he see he is destroying the sport with all these gimmicks?

His motive in that Wall Street Journal article is very clear, money! He lost some cash when Vettel took the title with 3 races left and he wants to fill that gap. First he takes a nice bonus from the abu dhabi race promotors and now he hopes this system will keep his pockets well filled.

I know the man has done a lot of good for this sport but surely his time has come? We all need to stand up and say: Away with Bernie! Time for a young, fresh face on the scene!

@datt So are you saying the double points idea didn’t come from Bernie even though he admitted it in the news article? And that he didn’t pressurize the strategy group in voting in favour of his idea because supposedly all the organizers had demanded from him that a season should last until the last race, while now those organisers say they never suggested such a ridiculous thing?

I know the rules are defined by the FIA but I’m now very sure every gimmick has to pass Bernie’s judgement first, if he didn’t come up with it in the first place. Bernie has become a liar and a cheat possessed by making money, time for some new ******* management I say!

I mean what’s so special about the last race? It still has the same number of laps, the circuit is not longer than 5km (overall), this awful rule is not fair at all! Think if McLaren (EXAMPLE1) had lead advantage, but both cars retire and MERCEDES (EXAMPLE 2) wins the last race with double points and they win the championships! What does the last race have so special? Nothing: no tougher conditions than the usual, not a longer track, not many more laps! Therefore this is not fair! Instead of thinking of such absurd rules, maybe Bernie should focus on having more exciting, REAL overtakes and have more equal cars between the top teams so we can actually have a good show until the last race!!!!!

As a game designer I always highly praise football for it’s design. It’s simple but the key element is the value of a goal being so incredibly high. A goal can happen at any point in the 90 minutes, yet it rarely does happen, but one single goal (point) can decide the outcome of the game. This leads to upsets, the favourites don’t always win. A single goal can be fluked and bundled over the goal-line and defended for the rest of the game. It’s value is so high. This helps make the game exciting.

When you compare tennis to football a point is scored every few seconds. The value of a point is much less (you can’t win a game of tennis by scoring one point). An underdog tennis player can fluke a point from time to time but he’d need to fluke around 50 points to cause an upset. Therefore in tennis the favourite almost always wins. People can see this as boring.

In F1 we can say an overtake is similar to a goal in football or a point in tennis. The value of an overtake decreases as you go down the grid. An overtake for the lead has much more value than an overtake for 12th place. We had a lot of overtaking last year, but it was seen as a boring year because the highest value overtake rarely happened (the overtake for the lead). We had mainly lower value overtakes (closer to tennis than football).

F1 has qualifying rules which put the fastest car at the front of the race from the start. Which means we don’t really see (or expect to see – which is a key point) an overtake for the lead. So we make overtaking easier, which nudges F1 into the tennis area and away from the high value football area. We see more low value overtakes. While the low value overtakes happen the guy with the fastest car at the front of the race drives away on the perfect racing line and is never seen again. Meaning we don’t see the highest value overtake and crucially we already know it won’t happen during the rest of the race, whereas in football that high value goal can happen at any given time in the 90 minutes, even if 89 minutes of the game has been dominated by someone else.

F1 is my favourite sport, but football is beautifully designed.

What makes me laugh is when the F1 rule makers stupidly attempt to recreate the feel of football. Which can be seen in the double points rule for the last race of the season. They’re trying to recreate the situation in football when a team dominate for 89 minutes only to have the opposition score with the last kick of the game. The problem is they’ve created a rule which always makes it easier the score in the last minute of the game. The excitement is that it MIGHT happen, not that it will.

The football rule makers are so slow to change rules because they try to protect the purity of the game. You’d never see football increase the value of a goal to be worth two goals in the 90th minute. It’s stupidity.